“Bride & Prejudice” Directed by Gurinder
Chadha Miramax Pictures
Throngs of Indian women in colorful saris bursting into song is
not the image most commonly associated with Jane Austen’s
18th-century novel “Pride and Prejudice.” Luckily for
director Gurinder Chadha, it’s pretty difficult to mess up a
classic, and her new film “Bride & Prejudice”
sneaks by with this odd combination. Best known for making
“Bend It Like Beckham,” Chadha is back with another
upbeat East-meets-West film that tells the story of an Indian
family with four unwed daughters and a mother who is eager to marry
them well. The film centers around the second-eldest daughter,
Lalita (Aishwarya Rai), whose down-to-earth, modern character is
made clear through her love of reading, tractor riding and greeting
farmers. In Rai’s first entirely English role (she is one the
most famous actresses in India, as well as Miss World 1994),
language is not a problem. But her exaggerated facial expressions
and body language can be a bit much. While Lalita’s mother
wants to push her into an arranged marriage with a repulsive idiot,
Lalita is looking for romance. Fortunately for her, the wealthy Mr.
Darcy comes to town to save the day. The character of Mr. Darcy was
perhaps famously portrayed by Colin Firth in the BBC’s 1995
“Pride and Prejudice” miniseries. A variation of this
character was also revisited in the “Bridget Jones’s
Diary” films. Not quite filling Firth’s shoes, Martin
Henderson attempts to make Darcy amiable from the very beginning,
causing the stiffness he later exhibits to come off as bad acting
instead of introversion. Henderson is at his most believable when
he is staring at the beautiful Lalita, mouth slightly agape. In
“Bride & Prejudice,” Darcy’s arrogance is
depicted as more of a cultural difference than a character flaw.
The film’s unwillingness to show Darcy in a bad light proves
to be problematic, as Lalita has to twist his words and pick fights
in order to justify her loathing of him just to get the story
rolling. Consequently, the changes Darcy makes for love are not the
result of deep soul searching, but rather that of his learning to
appreciate a new culture. But the film cannot be blamed for not
being a play-by-play of the heart-wrenching novel. There is the
aforementioned miniseries for that. Rather, “Bride &
Prejudice” takes a popular story and uses it to showcase the
Indian culture and film style to audiences unfamiliar with
Bollywood. Chadha’s intent seems to be to make a film through
which both Indian and Western audiences can connect. In the
Bollywood tradition, “Bride & Prejudice” is the
type of movie one can watch with parents around, as more
conservative moral values prevail in the film: no kissing, no
violence. Lalita has a dream in which Darcy sweeps her up, carries
her outside into the pouring rain, pulls her close, leans in …
and that is the end of the dream. For what it lacks in action (in
both senses of the word) “Bride & Prejudice”
accounts for in musical routines. The substitution works
wonderfully during an Indian wedding dance, with bright, beautiful
colors swirling all around and dance moves that reveal character
conflicts. The music is also welcome when it comes with a humorous,
mocking tone, complete with a gospel choir and a chorus of surfers.
But it comes dangerously close to boring when songs drag on too
long, as it does in an early marketplace number that has an
unlimited amount of ways to rhyme “glad,”
“mad” and “sad.” Though afflicted with
predictability (especially if you are familiar with the book), the
love story is hard to mess up, and the film’s fun spirit is
hard to resist. ““ Amy Crocker